LINDSEY HALL: Eating disorders, you don’t just wake up and have one. You don’t just
wake up and you start starving yourself. No one’s body wants to be starving. I stopped
really knowing what hunger was.
LINDSEY HALL: February 27th, 2007: I am starting a diet today for real just until after Germany.
I need to be thin there. I feel like I am huge all the time.
COMM: For the past 12 years, 28-year-old, Lindsey has suffered from a number of different eating disorders.
LINDSEY HALL: My relationship with food has always been tumultuous. ‘I think losing
5 lbs would be ideal. This morning I ate a cup of fruit and half a bagel. But made
sure to leave a little bit of both.‘ It was a big joke with my family that Lindsey
only eats about 12 items or 14 items of food. ‘I am going to go workout too and burn
at least 250 calories.’ As I got older, yeah, that was when my relationship with food
really changed. It was in high school. So there I am where I know I am counting calories.
I definitely wasn’t the smartest girl in the class. I wasn’t the prettiest girl in
the class. I wasn’t the sportiest but I was small. When I hit puberty suddenly I wasn’t
the smallest person in the class. I knew I always wanted to be under a 100lbs. Always.
‘My stomach has been freaking out a lot lately. I hate eating.’ So weird seeing all that.
When I was 16 it was the first time I threw up intentionally. I remember getting
up and going to the bathroom and made myself puke. And I thought, ‘Oh, my god! That was so easy.’
LINDSEY HALL: I kept binge eating a secret. I would just find sneaky ways of hiding food
all over the house. I always binged cereal. That was my thing. Fruity cereal, sugary cereal,
it didn’t matter. I would binge until it hurt and then I go puke it up and that was my life.
COMM: At college, Lindsey’s eating disorders changed further after she lost her best friend
and turned to exercise and alcohol for solace.
LINDSEY HALL: I would exercise until; I would exercise until I was lightheaded. I would
go once, twice, three times a day because I was losing calories that made me feel good
about myself but also completely blocking out dealing with my best friend’s death.
And sometimes I would blackout.
LINDSEY HALL: I drank wine, lot of wine to coat my stomach. I never wanted to be really
drunk. I just didn’t want to feel hunger. And, so, for me, I drank one glass of wine.
It took that edge off, be able to go out and function, socially be around food without
feeling like I needed to eat. Drunkorexia is not a medical term. I think people get
confused and think that Drunkorexia is like this, you know, clinician's term. But it’s not.
COMML Throughout this time, Lindsey still tried to hide her eating disorder from all her friends and family.
KIMBERLYN DYER: Hey, do you want to drink wine?
LINDSEY HALL: Nope.
KIMBERLYN DYER: Okay!
KIMBERLYN DYER: Let’s go outside.
KIMBERLYN DYER: We went to dinner. I knew you had run a half marathon that day and you
ordered a kale salad and they put Parmesan cheese on it and you were like, really annoyed
because you thought they had put too much cheese on it. I know for a fact that you ran
like 13 miles that day and I saw that you were just like not eating.
LINDSEY HALL: My lowest weight was at age 23 and I weighed 88 lbs.
LINDSEY HALL: I told my parents about my eating disorder.
LINDSEY HALL: Once I told them they started noticing it.
LINDSEY HALL: And I didn’t realise that my parents were watching me so closely. You
know I had gotten away with my eating disorder for 7 years at that point.
JOANNA HALL: We found the boxes of cereal
GARY HALL: I opened the cabinet they were gone. I saw them in a recycle bin. I said,
‘There’s two boxes of cereals that have been eaten here in the last 24 hours.'
GARY HALL: Then that was just it. It all kind of came together.
LINDSEY HALL: Thank you, mom.
JOANNA HALL: You’re welcome.
JOANNA HALL: Well, I was devastated. You know, you beat yourself up, you think, ‘How come I didn’t see it?’
LINDSEY HALL: This was right before I went to treatment. So this was September 8th, 2013
and I wrote and I can’t, I really don’t even remember where I was when I wrote this.
But I wrote, ‘I am so unhappy living like this. I absolutely can’t continue to live
this way. I can’t. I am going to lose everything.’
COMM: Lindsey finally went into rehab at 23 years old.
LINDSEY HALL: This morning I am headed to Renfrew Treatment Centre, the place where
I went for eating disorder treatments. Been the first time in 4 years since I left treatment
but I am going back.
LINDSEY HALL: I look at Renfrew as place of safety I guess. In my recovery I have learned
a lot, part of my eating disorder was always wanting to be validated and wanting to be
like loved. I wanted everyone to like me. When I made my bigger transformation it was
actually having to be, it was actually having to come clean and be honest about more how
I was feeling and instead of just trying to manipulate all the situations around me.
LINDSEY HALL: I had to figure out who I was again. I had to
figure out who I was without this eating disorder because I had given up everything.
KIERSTEN RAPSTINE: I hear you are doing really well.
LINDSEY HALL: Yeah, thank you! Yeah, thank you!
KIERSTEN RAPSTINE: Alright, this is where the magic happens.
LINDSEY HALL: I remember this room very, very much. Have any of the guidelines changed?
KIERSTEN RAPSTINE: Not really. I mean we are still trying to encourage people to move away
from the diet mentality and not count calories. What do you remember about the food?
LINDSEY HALL: Remember there’s was lot of bagels and a lot of bananas. Waffle day! Oh,
god! Waffle day. Waffle and Pancake Day.
COMM: Lindsey now blogs about her experiences with eating disorders.
LINDSEY HALL: I wanted somebody to tell me exactly what it was going to be like. Like,
I wanted to hear the nitty-gritty. I started all this blogging because I wanted to give
that back. I wanted it to be somewhere on the internet for somebody that was like me
two weeks prior to going to treatment. I have literally been there.
LINDSEY HALL: 2 days ago, this girl reached out to me and said, ‘I hit rock bottom the
other night.’ And this chick is off to rehab tomorrow. ‘You are an incredible writer.
Thank you for your honest accounts and advocacy. You are giving me help.’ So it’s pretty cool, feels good.
JOANNA HALL: I think a lot of people have been helped by her and so I am, I am very proud of her.
LINDSEY HALL: As I look back at my journey, one of the biggest things I have taken away
from it is that it’s okay to not be okay.
GARY HALL: My biggest takeaway is just how proud I am of her. She took, you know, one
of the biggest lemons life could throw at you. She made lemonade out of it.
LINDSEY HALL: I read these diaries and it helps give me good perspective on where I am now.
I don’t even recognise that girl anymore, really.